


very lonely indeed

by clickingkeyboards



Series: Asexual!George [3]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, Asexual!George Mukherjee, Asexuality, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, I will stop projecting onto George eventually but today is not that day, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Although George prides himself upon being logical, a joking comment from Kitty about his relationship sends him deep into worry about his asexuality and what Alexander, who is none the wiser to it, will think.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee
Series: Asexual!George [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108283
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	very lonely indeed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunshinedflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinedflower/gifts).



Alexander spent the entire day giving me sideways looks, bumping his arm against mine and asking, “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yes,” I insisted every time, rolling my eyes at him fondly. “Don’t worry about me, Alex.”

The truth of it was that I wasn’t feeling particularly alright at all.

An interaction from earlier on that day was stuck inside my head, rattling about between equations and poisons and not allowing itself to be forgotten. 

“You two have been together for  _ ages _ ,” Kitty had said, as if neither of us knew that, leaning across the table where we were eating lunch. She regarded us with a particularly pointed look that I couldn’t place, much to my irritation. 

I nodded with a judgemental look and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, your point?”

“Have y’ been together yet?” she asked unashamedly.

Chuckling and flushing up to the tips of his ears in a way that stuck inside my mind, Alexander said, “No, not yet.”

_ Not yet. _

It was an implication of the action that would apparently happen at some point in the near future, but it was also something I never wanted to do.

* * *

“What’s going on with you?” Alexander asked pointedly from where he was stretched out on my bed, scrolling through Netflix. “You’ve been acting weird since we were with the others, are you annoyed at one of them?”

“No,” I replied as easily as I could, turning a page in the book that Daisy had leant to me. “Why are you so intent on finding problems where there aren’t any?”

That came out much harsher than I had intended. He looked up sharply to meet my eyes. “ _ I _ haven’t annoyed you, have I?”

“No, of course not.” Though I looked away, I could feel his gaze on me, wondering why I was so upset.

Clearly unconvinced, Alexander abandoned his laptop to focus on me. “You’re clearly upset about something.”

As sharply as I dared, I said, “And it doesn’t concern you, Alex.”

“Please tell me what’s wrong.” His eyes were wide and earnest, bright green and warm hazel, and one of his hands was reaching out to grasp one of mine. 

“If it’ll stop you  _ bothering _ me, fine.” I snatched my hand out of his reach. “I’m asexual.”

Alexander blinked. “Oh.”

“You do know what that is, don’t you?”

“A little.” He frowned as he tried to remember, his face crumpling up in a sweetly confused way that made my heart jump in my chest, just a little bit. The edge of the feeling in my chest was bitterness, a feeling that I had swallowed along with the label for my sexuality so long ago. “It means… no sexual attraction, right? But you’ve kissed me.”

“Are you doubting me?” I snapped.

He gave me an incredulous look. “I’m confused!”

“I feel… romantic attraction. I like kissing but… just for the action itself. It’s a nice feeling, warm and fluttery, but there’s no desire there. And there never will be.” I turned away from Alexander because I could feel the sharp feeling of tears pricking at the edges of my eyes, and the most frustrating part was that I couldn’t place  _ why _ . There was no reason for me to be crying, but I felt the back of my throat building pressure up into my skull and my head growing hot with the burning feeling coming from my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, no,” Alexander said in a rush, and I heard him scramble off the bed and down to the ground, on his knees in front of me with both hands grasping one of my own.

“Get off.”

“George—”

In that moment, I misread Alexander’s gestures, took concern for something quite different, and did something I never believed that I would do: propelled by a bout of vicious fear, I shoved him backwards as harshly as I dared. “You can’t fix it. So don’t even try.”

Alexander, looking rather disorientated, rushed to his feet and snapped, “George, shut up. First of all, that hurt. Second, why the  _ hell _ would I try that? Do you really think that I’d—”

I was about to shout back when my brother’s irritating lecturing tones came into my head.  _ “Breathe three times and see if you still want to shout.” _

Irritated with somebody who wasn’t even present, I forced myself to take three deep breaths with my hands pressed over my face. When I took them away, my vision was swirling and piercingly bright, and Alexander was regarding me with a look that fell between annoyance and amusement. I am admittedly all too familiar with that look of general confusion, it seems to be a common reaction to my existence.

“Sorry.”

“Idiot,” Alexander said without a single bit of harshness behind the syllables. “Now, sit down and explain this to me.”

Glaring at him for ordering me about, I sat down on my bed and pushed my back up against the wall. “It’s… complicated.” I wiped at my eyes with my sleeve. “I don’t know  _ why _ , but I cry every time I talk about it.”

“That’s fine, you’re allowed to cry,” Alexander replied, awkwardly sitting down beside me and keeping well away from touching me. “So… go on.”

“The way I think of it is that my feelings about romance are a ball,” I began unsteadily, feeling a touch ridiculous as I clenched one hand into a fist and pressed it to my chest. “For most people, they’re inside them, like a second heart. They affect the body deeply every second of the day. For me, my feelings are out here.” I held my fist out and away from my chest, focusing on the way that white bloomed under the nails of my hand as I held my thumb tighter. “They’re apart from me. It’s not this intrinsic bit of me and it’s not with my body in the same way but… it’s important to me.  _ You’re _ important to me. And I  _ know  _ how this sounds and I know that it means that I don’t love you as much as I should, but I don’t know how to love you more.”

The pause made the air in the room feel hot and heavy in a horrid, weighted way that only further diminished my understanding of why ‘hot and heavy’ was a romantic description. It was only oppressive, nothing elating about it at all.

Alexander finally spoke, and I despised not being able to read his tone. I usually understood everything. “You’re a right idiot, George.” When I looked over, he was shaking his head in that peculiar fond way, like he did whenever I said something that amused him despite not intending to be funny at all. He reached out and carefully took my hand. “I like how much you like me.”

“Thank you, I think.” I felt his hand against my own, the warmth of his skin and the damp of his fingertips, the patterns of his palm tangible under my touch. It felt different from all the times that he had held my hand before, in a way that I couldn’t quite place. The barrier of my secret seemed to have vanished and taken an invisible top layer of my skin with it, for Alexander’s hand felt as if it was pressing through my flesh and into my bones with a burning honest touch, and I was unsure whether or not I liked the feeling.

I pulled my hand from his and held it in my own instead. “I don’t… like being asexual. It feels very lonely indeed.”

Alexander got a very strange look on his face at that, which I saw when I glanced over. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he said quietly.

“You don’t have to say anything.” I wiped at the corners of my eyes with my thumb and forefinger and looked away from him again. I felt my swallow move down my throat in an unpleasant way as I tried to force down a knot of feelings.

I felt something brush my cheek and I opened my eyes to see Alexander carefully cleaning my tears from my face with the sleeve of his jumper. “Idiot,” he muttered, and grinned at me. “I still love you, silly thing. No matter where your feelings for me are.”

“Thanks, Alex.” I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths, wringing my hands as I did so. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Shoving you.”

He smiled broadly. “I won’t deny that it was completely unreasonable and a bit of a dick move, but I forgive you.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I said in a deadpan voice, and Alexander laughed. 


End file.
